Chapter 10
Evan
T he Monday after our wine and cheese gathering, I set our morning coffee on the kitchen table. It’s raining, unfortunately, so we can’t sit outside.
When Jane comes downstairs, she says, “Did you check your email? We got the link to the gallery for our wedding pictures.”
I sit next to her and take a sip from my mug—the one with the rainbow umbrella seemed appropriate today—before picking up my phone. I navigate to the gallery and enter the password that was provided.
The photos are in chronological order. We didn’t have the photographer take pictures of us getting ready, but there are a few pre-ceremony pictures of everyone mingling outside. One of my father with his hand on my shoulder; another of Jane talking to Auntie Gladys. (Well, I suspect my aunt was doing most of the talking.)
My gaze is drawn to the photos of Jane. I feel like I didn’t properly admire her on our wedding day, and I’m annoyed with myself. I mean, I told her that she looked great, but I don’t remember her looking like this . She has a soft glow about her that’s captivating.
I get to the picture of us kissing at the end of the ceremony. It looks slightly awkward—or maybe I’m just remembering how it felt in the moment.
I wish I could redo it.
I glance up at the woman next to me. She’s wearing a simple black T-shirt, and her brow is furrowed in concentration as she stares at her phone.
“We’ll have to pick something for our thank-you cards,” she says. “Not that we need to decide now, but we should get those sorted in the next couple of months.”
“Yeah.”
She sets down her phone and turns to me. It’s quiet in our house; all I can hear is the rain pattering on the patio.
“Do you not like the pictures?” she asks.
Oh God. Is it my expression? The tone of my voice when I gave that one-word answer?
Evan, you’re an idiot.
“No, no,” I rush to assure her. “I love them. She did a great job. I’m just not fully awake yet.”
I continue studying the photos. After the ceremony and receiving line, the photographer took pictures of us with my family, then spent about ten minutes taking pictures of just the two of us. When we were discussing what we wanted, before the wedding, she suggested a few other locations nearby where we could have romantic shots, but we declined.
And now, I kick myself for that.
I zoom in on one of the pictures. We’re standing in the small garden at the venue, and Jane is looking up at me with a fond smile. Was she faking that? Or is it real?
“We should get a large print to hang on the wall,” I say. “Maybe this one?” I show her the picture that’s captured my attention, but I’m not sure I actually want to see it every day.
I might obsess over it.
By the middle of Monday morning, it’s clear it’s going to be a rather hellish week for me at work. Last-minute meetings eat up time that I desperately need. Though I don’t tell Jane much about it, I think she notices.
When I get up on Wednesday, I head downstairs and find Watson sitting on a kitchen chair. I release a surprised laugh. He isn’t wearing any accessories, but there’s a mug in front of him that simply says, in large letters, “Fuck.” (One of Jane’s mugs, not mine.)
This is the first time she’s moved Watson. She’s not around to see my reaction; no, she must be on the elliptical machine in the basement.
When we’re sitting outside with our coffee—I’ve stolen the “fuck” mug; I hope Watson doesn’t mind—Jane makes no mention of the earlier scene in the kitchen.
Instead, she says, “We’ve spent a lot of time at home lately.”
“We have. I thought that’s what you like?”
“I do, but how about we go out for dinner this Friday?”
I shouldn’t be so excited that my wife is asking me on a date, of sorts, but I am. “Where should we go?”
“Leave that to me,” she says.
“Evan, are you ready?”
“Just a minute!” I call, but there’s no way I’ll be able to fix this mess in a minute. I sigh and take out the makeup remover.
A moment later, there’s a knock on the half-open door of my en suite, and Jane pokes her head in. She’s wearing some kind of gauzy black shirt, and her lips are red. She looks at what’s strewn across the counter.
“Were you trying to put on eyeshadow?” she asks.
“‘Trying’ is the key word, yes,” I say.
Aside from the wedding, I haven’t worn makeup in a while, but I felt the urge to do so today. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe because my life has seemed so conservative lately? Marriage, house in the suburbs. Or it has something to do with the rough week I’ve survived.
I sigh. “It’s fine, we can go.”
Jane steps into the bathroom. Her outfit has a striking silhouette. She’s wearing wide-legged pinstripe black pants and an asymmetrical top that exposes her left shoulder, but not her right. She’s always favored black clothes when dressing up.
I know I’ve seen her wear that shirt before, but it’s somehow different today. I want to slide the other sleeve down and bare her right shoulder. I want…
I should not be lusting after my wife.
I move toward the door of the washroom, but she doesn’t step back to allow me to pass. She’s mere inches from me now, and that’s not helping.
“I can do it for you,” she says.
“No, it’s okay. We don’t have time.” I don’t know where we’re going; she just told me when to be ready.
She looks at her watch. “It’s fine. I checked the traffic, and it’s not too bad. If we leave in twenty minutes, we’ll be a couple of minutes late, at most.”
I hesitate. “Okay.” Then I pull out my phone and show her a short video. “This is what I was trying to do.”
The person in the video is white and doesn’t have monolids like I do. Combined with the fact that I haven’t done this a while, I wasn’t happy with my efforts.
Jane nods, then lifts herself onto the counter so she’s taller than I am.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” I ask as she opens up the flame eyeshadow palette.
“Yeah. I know you rarely see me wear eyeshadow”—it looks like she’s wearing eyeliner and mascara right now, nothing more—“but I’m pretty good at it. I didn’t have a mother or older sister to teach me about makeup, so at some point, I made a dedicated effort to teach myself.” She picks up a brush.
“That wasn’t what I, uh, meant,” I say as she starts working on my face. I’ve worn bold makeup in public with Jane before, but I’m very aware of the fact that we now have matching wedding bands. “One of the women I dated—not for long—she didn’t like when I did anything that would mark me as…not necessarily straight.”
Jane frowns. “Then why was she dating a queer guy? I assume she knew.”
“Yeah.” I’d told her that I was bi, though now I usually call myself queer because it feels more comfortable. “I think she liked being able to discuss men—you know, movie stars and stuff—with me. She liked when it felt theoretical? But when, for example, she learned that I’d actually slept with men, it made her uneasy.”
Jane pauses in her work. “Well, that’s fucking bullshit.”
I manage a chuckle. “I know.”
“Nothing—about this, I mean—has changed now that we’re married.”
“I didn’t really think—” I begin.
“No, it’s fine. I get it.” She’s looking very intently at my eyes. Her tongue peaks out from between her red lips. I’m captivated by her closeness, by the sight of her focusing on something.
On me.
Having her do my makeup…it feels very intimate.
She tips up my chin with a single finger, and I yearn to feel her entire hand trailing down my neck.
Get it together, Evan .
Finally, she gives me a brisk nod. “Not bad. Tell me what you think.” She hops down from the counter. “I think you look hot.”
I can’t focus on my reflection because that word is echoing in my head.
Hot .
I know she doesn’t mean it in an I-want-to-get-you-naked way, but still.
“Is it okay?” she asks.
Oh no. Now I’ve been quiet for too long and she’s worried I don’t like it.
I squeeze her hand. “Yeah, I love it.”
Jane drives us east along 16th. She parks in a lot in Unionville and leads me to a Greek restaurant in a converted house. The hostess takes us to a table under a red umbrella on the front patio. Baskets of flowers hang on the white fence.
“This is lovely,” I say. “Have you been here before?”
Jane shakes her head. “No, I was just looking for something with a nice patio.”
She busies herself with the menu, while I spend another few seconds looking around. It’s the sort of place that could be on a listicle of romantic patios in the Greater Toronto Area, but I remind myself that she doesn’t mean it to be romantic .
We debate getting the platter for two, then decide it’s too much food—it would probably be enough to serve at least three. I opt for the lamb shank, and she chooses the quail. For appetizers, we eventually settle on melitzanosalata, which I’ve never had before, but it sounds a bit like baba ganouj. Jane also wants to get the taramasalata.
“Would you like a drink?” I ask. “I’m happy to drive home.”
Once she selects a white wine and we place our order, there’s a moment of awkward silence. I feel slightly off-kilter.
“Any plans for the weekend?” she asks.
“I have a bunch of laundry to do tomorrow, and Watson thought he’d like a plant friend, one that isn’t a prickly cactus. We could go to Home Depot?”
I know, I know, it’s an incredibly mundane conversation for a first date, but I don’t mind.
It’s strange that I’m thinking of this as a first date, though. Jane and I hung out many times, just the two of us, while engaged—although, to be fair, we were mostly trying to figure out logistical stuff and rarely went out to eat.
It’s not a date. It’s a meal with a friend.
Jane’s wine arrives. She murmurs her thanks, then tries a sip. Her lipstick leaves a faint smudge on the glass, and I shouldn’t find that mesmerizing, but I do.
Fortunately, before I can fixate on it too much, the server brings over our dips. I swipe some of the pale-pink taramasalata up with my pita. The color is from the roe, and I think the base is crustless white bread.
Jane doesn’t say much as she helps herself to the dips. I try not to stare on her lips and her throat as she eats, but then I drop my gaze to her single bare shoulder—and for some reason, that doesn’t help.
“Do you like it?” She gestures at the food. “I feel like I’m eating twice as fast as you.”
“I do, I do.” I pick up my pace and try to stop admiring her.
I don’t succeed.
But the dips are delicious, and our mains are equally tasty. I give Jane some of my lamb, and she murmurs her approval.
It really is a nice night, and I’m done with work for the week. An older white woman gives me an odd look as she walks by—the eye makeup, presumably—but I brush it off pretty easily. I tell myself it was just my imagination, even though it probably wasn’t.
After dinner, we walk up and down Main Street before returning to the car.
“You know,” Jane says as I pull out of the parking lot, “I think Home Depot is still open. Should we go now?”
“Sure, why not? You’ll have to give me directions, though.”
She directs me to the most convenient location, and as we step out of the car, I’m conscious of the fact that we’re not dressed for buying plants at Home Depot. Jane is wearing a sophisticated black outfit with stilettos, for God’s sake. But if she wants to do it now while we’re out, I’m game. I put on my mask, and we head into the store.
“We should get something big for the living room,” I suggest. “To sit on the floor and cover Watson’s head. Maybe one of these?” I point to some kind of palm.
“I like this one better.” Jane gestures to at a mass cane plant—I know what it is only because I can read.
“Fine with me. What about a Boston fern?”
“Put it in the cart.”
“Ooh, look!” I say. “This one is called a Swiss cheese vine. Don’t you like cheese?”
She considers the hole-y plant for a moment and nods. “Sure, why not?”
By the time we leave the store—five minutes before closing—we’ve spent over a hundred dollars on plants and a variety of other things, and I laugh as I jog with the cart toward the car, Jane jogging beside me despite her heels.
She starts to load our purchases into the car. “Shit.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“The mass—whatever. The tall plant. How are we going to get it home?”
I look at my hatchback, then the plant, and start laughing. “Maybe we should return it?”
She twists her lips. “No, we’ll try to make it work. We’ll put everything else in first, and I’ll sit in the backseat to babysit it.”
In the end, we push forward the passenger’s seat, set the mass cane on the floor behind it, and tip the plant to the side. Jane sits behind the driver’s seat and holds on to the plant’s trunk. She moves a leaf out of the way so she can close the door.
“Ready?” I ask, fastening my seatbelt.
“Let’s go,” she says.
We manage to get the plants into our house with only a small amount of spilled dirt, which I promptly clean up.
“Where should we put them?” I ask.
“We’ll need to look up what conditions they prefer. Or ask Yvonne. We can do that tomorrow. For now…” Jane sets the largest plant near the back door and carefully places Watson underneath.
For some reason, seeing Jane in her going-out clothes, gently positioning a large plushie, causes a rush of amused fondness in my chest. If I’m honest with myself, the intensity is unlike what I would have felt if I’d seen her doing such a thing even a few weeks ago.
I’m not sure I want to be honest.
“What do you want to do now?” she asks. “I need to get out of these clothes…”
She says something after that, but I’m not paying attention. I’m thinking of her sitting on the bathroom counter as she did my makeup. I’m thinking of removing that shirt with the same care she showed Watson. Brushing her nipple—
“Evan?” she says.
“I was just thinking…we didn’t take any pictures of us. That seems like a mistake. Since we both look nice. Even if you have dirt on your pants now.”
She looks down and wipes it off, and I try to get myself under control.
“You’re right,” she says at last. “You look really good tonight. You deserve a picture.”
I hand her my phone before sitting beside Watson and the plant on the carpet, which earns me a chuckle that I find more delightful than I should. Especially after her compliment—though I tell myself she was just complimenting her own work.
She takes a couple of pictures, and then I beckon her onto the couch. When she sits down, I join her, and I hold my phone up for a selfie.
“Is this really necessary?” she mutters, but she leans closer to me for the picture.
I take a few before telling her that I need a shower. “Want to watch an episode afterward?” I don’t say which show, but she’ll know.
“Sure.”
Upstairs, I inspect my face in the mirror before removing the makeup, then pop a gummy. I take a cool shower, which I hope will be enough to douse the physical attraction I feel toward Jane, since this was very much not part of the deal.
When I return to the living room, she’s dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, and she has our next episode ready to go.
“I had a gummy,” I tell her. “You want one?”
“No, I think the wine was enough.”
She curls up against me, and I start the third episode of a contemporary K-drama. Throughout the entire episode, I’m conscious of her closeness, but at least my earlier lust has faded. Somewhat.
Just before eleven, I pat Watson on the head before Jane and I go upstairs together. Outside her bedroom door, I give her a lingering hug.
“Thanks for tonight,” I say.
As she heads into her room without me, it feels so wrong. I want to go with her. I want to fall asleep next to her and wake up next to her. We’re a little affectionate with each other, and we cuddle while we watch TV and movies, but somehow, that’s not enough.
I want to touch her even more.
But I don’t tell her any of that, just retreat to my bedroom.